Iran Starts Building Model Of Captured US Drone

A senior Iranian military official said on Sunday that the country had reverse-engineered an American spy drone captured by its armed forces last year and had begun building a prototype.

Brigadier-General Amir Ali Hajizadeh, Commander of the Aerospace Force of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC), was quoted by the semi-official Mehr news agency as saying that experts were also recovering data from the U.S. RQ-170 Sentinel captured in December in eastern Iran.

Iran had announced in December last that a U.S. spy drone which had violated Iranian air space, was shot down by its armed forces. U.S. officials have acknowledged losing the drone, but said Iran would find it hard to exploit any data and technology aboard the unmanned aircraft because of measures taken to limit the intelligence value of drones operating over hostile territory.